Workings Of See-ability?

[sparhawk]

While I think that some of your ideas are too hardcore and might make the game boring, I don't think this for all of your ideas. And I have no problem with taking it down another path, but IMO the best approach is, to make the first version rather classic for various reasons. One is, to attract fans to our mod. There is no point in creating this toolset if we only get one or two mappers dedicated enough to create something, so the more Thief fans we can attracxt, the better it will be in the long run for the survival of our work.

The second main reason is that Thief is alread there and it is proven a good game (gameplaywise). Adding to many new things might show creativity, but this doesn't mean that a better game will be the result. So while we still have to do the basic implementations, we should stick to the classic style because it is easier to implement and known to work. We can add fancy stuff later as well, or there can be branches created going different paths, but they all share the same core gameplay, and this is what we currently are working on.

[Pyrian]

On the subject of silhouettes, IF they're done, I'd suggest a fairly large difference in spotability if the player is moving, and by what proportion of the silhouette is visible. A partial silouette of a crouched individual against relative darkness, not moving, simply doesn't attract the eye much.

[FishFace]

Agreed. Like an owl's, our eyes are very good at detecting movement and changes in otherwise static things. However, they're also 'trained' to detect people shaped bits. However, if we're not careful, the spotting code is going to turn into the brain's sight lobe in complexity...

In essence, "Yeah, What Pyrian Said!"

[gleeful]

Implementing sillhouettes would probably be bad for gameplay, since it would break this simplicity.

i second that.

 

kind regards

gleeful

[oDDity]

THe reasons you stated there are exactly why the gaming industry is in such a stagnant state these days.

Developer's go for the safe option every time and make yet another version of the same generic game type we've seen 100 times before, becasue it's been tried and tested and they're confident it'll sell a few copies.

Innovation = risk.

 

We've nothing to risk however, so the argument doesn't work on us.

 

Thief wouldn't even exist if LGS hadn't been an innovative developer who tried to make a new genre.

I think we should carry on that tradition, albeit on a smaller scale.

[Hylix Ulyx]

I agree with you in principle, Oddity. But putting things in perspective, you have to see that none of this (your ideas, your models, the coding, the artwork, the themes, the gameplay) might not have been even a thought had LGS not made a game called Thief.

 

I think even the few ideas that you've shared with the rest of us are sound and interesting, but they sound more like expansions on an already established set of gameplay dynamics than innovations.

 

Can you honestly say that if Thief was never made, you would have eventually been moved to create this type of game yourself, replete with your "hardcore and realistic" gameplay features, and your well crafted models and textures, which seem hauntingly like a game I once played....

 

I'm not trying to imply you don't have the creativity or the drive (your models alone can put that argument to bed), I'm just asking you to honesty admit to yourself from where the wellspring of inspiration originates.

 

All that aside, like it or not, everyone is looking forward to this Mod not just because you're a group of talented so-and-so's (which you are), or because they want a fresh, innovative, never-before-experienced experience, but because they want a farmiliar feeling they lost when TDS was made. If you forget that, you will be alienating everyone who is supporting you (monitarily, spiritually, creatively, or otherwise).

 

Your fanbase consisits primarily of Thief fans. You know what happened when the guys who created the series forgot that.

 

This may sound overreaching, but even with the T3 editor in the hands of many other talented so-and-so's, you guys are the last bastion of "Thief" there will ever be.

 

I know it sounds trite. But it's the truth.

 

Hylix.

Edited April 19, 2005 by Hylix Ulyx

[sparhawk]

This may sound overreaching, but even with the T3 editor in the hands of many other talented so-and-so's, you guys are the last bastion of "Thief" there will ever be.

That's really a nice thing to hear.

[FishFace]

Probably a sentiment reaching throughout many of the people looking at this mod. First and foremost, this mod really needs to reach the fanbase, because otherwise it'll flop. Pleasing the fanbase may involve changing core elements of Thiefiness, but that's dangerous ground. As ever with such a toolkit, providing the means for other ways of doing things will most likely be the best way, since this allows greatest control in the hands of the designers.

 

In the end, though, ideas such as this will, I expect, simply need to be tested thoroughly to determine whether they're any good.

[Domarius]

i second that.

Cool.

 

While we want it to be as real as possible, at the end of the day, it ISN'T real, you're not really there running around in 3D space with your own feet, grabbing things with your own hands, using your own head to look around, etc. so there will always be a dramatic difference between how the game world works and how real life works.

 

THen again, since none of us have any game making experience, ...

Speak for yourself.

Edited April 20, 2005 by Domarius

[gleeful]

... Innovation = risk. ...

 

....Thief wouldn't even exist if LGS hadn't been an innovative developer who tried to make a new genre.

I think we should carry on that tradition, albeit on a smaller scale.

don't get me wrong - i'm all for innovation. it's just that i imagine that particular idea to make the gameplay a lot more complicated and frankly a bit tedious. while you might enjoy that (playing for the challenge of it, not just for fun) i and others most certainly wouldn't.

 

i also think that -as this is a thief-inspired mod, not something completely new- most people just want to feel right at home with the game-mechanics we've grown to love over the years, no matter how tried and true they are.

 

kind regards

gleeful

[Hylix Ulyx]

That's really a nice thing to hear.

Hey, I calls'em like I see'em.

 

I'm completely at peace with my unhealthy obsession with Thief, and even if the toolset and the campaign are just half as good as I think it will be, it'll fit me like old boots.

 

I hope you don't feel cornered, Oddity. I'd like to see some of your ideas implemented after the toolset and the inital campaign comes out.

 

But what the hell do I know? I'm a Dark Mod fanboy, and it's not even out yet!

 

Hylix.

[oDDity]

I don't feel cornered, I'm used to being the odd one out.

I'm too arrogant, intransigent and cynical to operate very well in a team environment)

[Domarius]

But it seems to be working for the most part, all the same. For one thing, every team needs a devil's advocate. Otherwise we'd spend all our time patting ourselves on the back and overlooking flaws.

[obscurus]

For some of us, challenging is fun. I find surprises fun, things that make you think on the run. I think if sillhouettes would be an immense imrovement in gameplay if it can be implemented without too much of a performance hit. One of the reasons i liked thief so much when it came out was the fact that it was much more complex and realistic (in some ways at least) than other games at the time. It wasn't just point and shoot, you had to think about what you were doing and plan ahead. Now that technology is getting better at approximating reality, I see no reason not to take things to the next level.

 

Sure, pumping guards full of arrows and blackjacking people left right and centre is fun, but after a while the novelty wears off and you need something with a bit more complexity to keep the illusion going (at least I do.

 

I honestly don't understand why some people would find more realsim tedious, for me it makes things more interesting and FUN

[Springheel]

I honestly don't understand why some people would find more realsim tedious, for me it makes things more interesting and FUN

 

So you'd be in favour of a bladder meter and pee breaks?

[obscurus]

Well, obviously you have to draw the line somewhere, but then again in a lot of games, the inhabitants seem to live in a world without toilets. Thief was always good with that - plenty of toilets there, and I guess mediaeval people would be more likely to empty a chamber pot out the window... but so many other games lack that sort of thing. For me it can really break the mood when you start to notice the absence of things that subconciously you expect to be there...

 

I don't think having a bladder meter would add anything, but having guards stop to relieve themselves every now and then could be amusing, and could add something to gameplay (but it might be better as a scripted thing at a particular point in a level). A drunk guard having to empty his bladder every few minutes maybe :lol:

 

I thought about having to eat to restore health - say after a period of time you lose a health bar or two, and you have to pinch some food and eat it to get your health back up to full, but that is probably going overboard, as i have to sleep, eat etc at some point anyway, I dont need my thief character to do so as well.

 

But as far as visibility (and audibility etc) physics goes, it is an essential feature of stealth gameplay, and the more realisticly it is implemented, the better IMO

[Vadrosaul]

I thought about having to eat to restore health - say after a period of time you lose a health bar or two, and you have to pinch some food and eat it to get your health back up to full, but that is probably going overboard, as i have to sleep, eat etc at some point anyway, I dont need my thief character to do so as well.

 

Always something I found silly about Thief (MA only I think) was the fact that you could eat yourself back to full health. Unless the food is magical I thought that was just dumb. After a brutal melee I could eat a smorgasboard and be as good as new

[thestemmer]

Always something I found silly about Thief (MA only I think) was the fact that you could eat yourself back to full health. Unless the food is magical I thought that was just dumb. After a brutal melee I could eat a smorgasboard and be as good as new

It DID make you pick up and admire those deliciously-rendered apples, though.

[Springheel]

We are planning on adding as much believability to the AI as possible, having them act in more realistic ways then other Thief games. And yes, that includes washroom breaks!

[Domarius]

obscurus, something I've learned in my (limited) game dev experience is that a lot of 'realistic' ideas sound really good when you think of them, but don't actually turn out to be all that fun when you put them in the game.

[obscurus]

obscurus, something I've learned in my (limited) game dev experience is that a lot of 'realistic' ideas sound really good when you think of them, but don't actually turn out to be all that fun when you put them in the game.

Nevertheless, I think that it is important that the AI should respond to sillhouettes (assuming it can be implemented) - for me it detracts from the fun factor when a guard should obviously be able to see me in front of a window or whatever, but the light gem says he/she can't. It makes it too easy to hide.

 

Actually I would like the option not to have a light gem, so I have to guess a bit as to whether the guard can see me or not.

 

I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard (mind you I don't know a lot about programming) to make it so that it is a preference the player can choose, i.e, enable sillhouettes, disable lightgem, so hardcore realism fanatics like me can have our fun, and everyone else can have theirs.

 

I guess I like my games gritty, realistic, difficult, frustrating and slow - a small map can seem a hell of a lot bigger when it takes you three or four hours to complete it.

 

I don't know how many of you have played Medal of Honour, but the Omaha Beach landing level was an absolute bastard to get through. I loved it! Fun can be different things to different people. Sometimes I like to play Unreal Tournament with god mode on and unlimited ammo, fragging bots just for the hell of it, but if I did that often I would be pretty lame

[Maximius]

The lack of sensitivity to sillhouettes in Thief bugs me a little too. It blows the suspension of disbelief when you hide from a guard only to realize you stepped in front of 6 square feet of glass lit from behind the whole time but he could not see you.

[sparhawk]

for me it detracts from the fun factor when a guard should obviously be able to see me in front of a window or whatever, but the light gem says he/she can't.  It makes it too easy to hide.

 

I'm not sure if the lightgem reall tesll you that the AI can not see you. I always interpreted the light gem in such a way that it tells you how much you are in the shadow, which in most cases amount to the same. This will influence how good the AI can see you, but is not a guarantuee. Because of this interpretation we coded the lightgem accordingly. this means that the AI will take it into account, but nothing more. Especially in the case of silhouettes this wouldn't be true (unless we were cheating), because how good the silhouette is visible depends of the relative position of the observer in relation to the observee and the lightsource. This means that the lightem gem is unable to tell you such a thing, because if you are seen from two different AI positions, one of them could see your silhouette while the other one would not see you at all. The lightgem is just a gamecrutch to assess the amount of light. Since you are in a game it is harder to make such assesments because your view in RL is much different. Maybe with engines like D3 where you have real dynamic lights a lightgem wouldn't even be neccessary anymore, but your vision is still way more limited in relation to RL so it still is a help. We make it optional though, so you can switch it off if you don't want it. We planned a lot of such customization options where you can influence certain properties of the game.

 

I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard (mind you I don't know a lot about programming) to make it so that it is a preference the player can choose, i.e, enable sillhouettes, disable lightgem, so hardcore realism fanatics like me can have our fun, and everyone else can have theirs. 

 

We alreadey discussed this long ago. You can be pretty sure. Most of the ideas and suggestions were already discussed in the early phase and we already agreed on the proceedings in many such cases. So far I have not seen much proposals that we did NOT discuss yet. And you can be sure that these were rather heated discussions, and still are in some cases.

 

I guess I like my games gritty, realistic, difficult, frustrating and slow - a small map can seem a hell of a lot bigger when it takes you three or four hours to complete it.

 

Welcome to Oddityworld.

[Pyrian]

My understanding is that having AI's detect silhouettes is a relatively difficult programming task.

 

The technique I heard was to project a "shadow" of the player as if the AI were a light source, and check the brightness of the textures that virtual-shadow falls on. My guess is that that could get extremely processor intensive under certain circumstances so you'd have to be very careful that it doesn't grind the game to a halt. To do that, you'd want to optimize and perhaps simplify the process as much as possible (obviously), and then strictly control the circumstances under which the check is even made (if they already see you or you're out of LOS there's obviously no point, for example).

 

Unfortunately silhouettes are notoriously visible at long distances so you couldn't just put a distance cap if you wanted it to seem realistic. For realism's sake you wouldn't want a small percentage of stationary silhouette to give anything away, either; how visible it is should depend a LOT on whether its moving and also on how "recognizable" it is as a person (and not another guard!). The issue simply isn't simple.

 

Also, the player shadow is a potential giveaway, and implementing that has a notably similar set of problems. I'd be worried that implementing all that would have a similar effect on the Doom engine as adding a pile of overlapping lights to a complex room purportedly does.

[FishFace]

I think it would be permissible to put a distance cap on it - if our thief isn't dressed too conspicuously, he'd just look like a guard, same with portions of sillhouettes. And of course, realism to impossibility != fun.